Michelson was born on December 19, 1852 in Strzelno, Poland. At the age of three, his parents immigrated to the United States. His father became a successful merchant in San Francisco. When he became 17 years old, Albert entered the U.S. Naval Academy where he excelled in physics and other science, but was not a model sailor. He graduated from the academy in 1873 and started a four year teaching career there in 1875. After this time he took on several different teaching positions. The last one being at the University of Chicago in 1889 where he was a professor and head of the physics department until his retirement in 1929. During his life, Michelson married twice and each time had three children. Shortly after his retirement, Albert Michelson died on May 9, 1931 in Pasadena, California.

In 1878, Albert Michelson now a Ph.D., began to work on confirming the existence of the mysterious "aether." It was thought for several decades that the Earth floated in a fluid called ether as it went through its orbit. He began work on an interferometer which would (hopefully) confirm the existence of aether and determine its effects on light as it passed through it. The idea of an interferometer was suggested in 1868 by a French astronomer, Armand Fizeau. The instrument was designed to split a light beam into two separate portions using mirrors along perpendicular paths and then bring them back together. If the two beams of light had ceased to be synchronized then interference fringes (or dark lines) of alternating light would appear at the rendezvous point. Hence, dark lines would be received and observed. In other words, by using very sensitive equipment, two beams of light can be brought so close together that the beams can interact with each other. Using very accurate measurements of the width between the interference lines, the observer (Michelson) would be able to measure the various velocities of light. The purpose of the test was to measure the velocity of the Earth against the aether. He constructed and tested his first version of the interferometer while he was in Germany between 1878 and 1880. To his surprise, his early results produced no dark lines which implied that there was no difference between the speeds of the two light beams. He believed that there was some sort of error but every test revealed the same results. When he was professor at the Case School in Cleveland in 1887, he and a colleague of his, Dr. Edward W. Morley, were ready to attempt another experiment with an improved L-shaped interferometer. This famous endeavor has become known as the Michelson-Morley Experiment and its humble results changed science forever. Yet again the results to confirm and measure the velocity through ether were negative. Scientists have referred to the outcome as a null result. Even though this negative result helped to lead the scientific community to where it is today, Michelson always felt that his test and its results were a failure.

Michelson did not see how he had helped physics by shattering the belief of the mysterious "aether." Nevertheless, he calculated one of the most accurate values for the speed of light in 1923. His initial value was 299,798 km/s for the speed of light. His final results were completed in 1933 after his death and were 299,774 km/s which differed from the accepted value of 1970 by only 2 km/s. In 1907, for his work on determining the speed of light, Albert Michelson became the first American to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. Michelson's interferometer had different applications as well. For example, he used a modified version of his interferometer attached to a telescope for making the first successful measurement of a star’s diameter (Betelgeuse) in 1920.

Albert Michelson’s failure in locating aether successfully led the scientific community to where it is today.